In a fresh development, Anupam Mittal has launched a tightly worded attack at a long running narrative of ‘Bharat doesn’t pay’. A slang used by industry executives to describe the price sensitivity of the average Indian consumer.
For a sizable part of its history in the larger Indian start-up eco-system, the Indian consumer has been characteristically marked as a price sensitive user. Where the slightest difference in prices of roughly similar goods and services can make all the difference for competitive brands and companies.
In his latest post on LinkedIn, Mittal has questioned this ‘prevailing wisdom’ among many upcoming founders that the Indian masses are unwilling to open their wallets for digital services. Mittal argues that this perspective is less a market reality and more a convenient shield for internal failures.
When do Indian consumers become comfortable with large prices ?
Sharing his views on the “Bharat doesn’t pay” logic, Anupam Mittal said that the phrase is a “lazy and expensive excuse” used by companies to justify poor unit economics or a lack of Product-Market Fit (PMF).
As per Mittal, the truth behind what prompts an Indian consumer to spend is more elegant and simple: “value over price”.
“The truth is simpler, Bharat pays for value. I learned this the hard way with Shaadi.com, Makaan.com, and Mauj, and am now seeing a second generation of companies monetizing at scale,” Mittal posted.
Presenting an example to prove his point, Mittal referred to the entrepreneurial journey of Primetrace Technologies as an ideal case study to solidify his argument.
The Primetrace story
Founded by Abhishek Kejriwal alongside a team of five in 2020, Primetrace is a consumer facing AI start-up based in Bengaluru that has quietly defied the “no monetization” trope that often plagues community-led platforms.
Primetrace first gained significant traction through ‘Kutumb’, a community network platform that scaled rapidly before entering a period of relative ‘quiet’ in the media. While skeptics assumed the silence meant a lack of momentum, Mittal revealed that the company was actually focusing on the bottom line.
“They started a community network called Kutumb with a bang, then, for a long while, the noise died down. In a hyper-connected world, if you aren’t constantly in the headlines, people assume you’ve gone sideways. I’ll admit, I wondered the same. Turns out, they weren’t struggling. They were printing money,” Mittal posted.
“The parent company, Primetrace, has quietly emerged as a serious, high-yield machine with a ₹200 Cr EBITDA run-rate. No vanity metrics, no hyper-cycles, just solid scale,” the shark-tank personality added.
Mittal on Post 2021 start-up culture
As per Mittal, Primetrace’s journey paints an accurate picture of what its like to build and scale a start-up in the post 2021 world that has allowed the community to move from a place where they have to choose between “growth OR profit” to moving forward with “both growth AND profit.”
Summing up his post, Mitall mentioned that Indian start-ups need to evolve their pricing parameters and operational logistics in alignment with the new class of consumers and stop blaming the market for everything.
“Indian users are also evolving. They are now more than willing to pay, but only for sharp solutions, priced fairly. Time for companies to stop blaming the market, The ‘Bharat struggle’ is often lack of insight & imagination,” Mitall concluded.
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